


These Fragments I Have Shored

by lilith_lessfair



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilith_lessfair/pseuds/lilith_lessfair
Summary: Nerdanel at the sea, remembering her husband and her children.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7
Collections: Lord of the Rings Secret Santa 2019





	These Fragments I Have Shored

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isilloth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isilloth/gifts).

The last rays of the setting sun found Nerdanel where she had so often come on this day. She walked along the shore, casting her eyes to look out at sea. She has done this for year after year, yeni after yeni, waiting for a ship that has not yet come. 

Many years had passed after Noldor had departed Valinor for a fruitless quest in Middle Earth before Nerdanel had become willing to journey to the sea. At first, after Fëanor’s departure, after the Oath, after the Kinslaying and after the theft of the ships, there had been little time. Even if there had been, she had known that she would not have been welcome near Alqualondë or any other harbor held by the mariners. The remnant of the Noldor, Finarfin and his people, those who had remained and those who had turned before the ships, before the deaths, had focused almost immediately upon the process of healing and of rebuilding. The lives taken in anger and in sorrow, in madness and in rage, were not able to be returned, not by any art the Noldor knew, but help had been offered in terms of rebuilding the more tangible things lost. Ships, after all, might be built and a harbor repaired. The tools, materials, and supplies needed for these tasks had been provided. The hands and the talent with which to labor had been offered. No one among the Noldor had been certain that the offered recompense, insufficient as it must, as it could not help but be, would be accepted. Nerdanel herself had been unsure that she possessed the generosity of spirit to do so had her sons been the ones attacked and slain. She had been humbled when the Teleri, grieving and angry, had agreed and had allowed the Noldorin craftsman entry.

After the damage had been assessed and the work had been divided, she had then worried that she had no help to offer. She was an artist, not an artisan. She was a maker of works of beauty, not tools of craft. She had known as well as any other that the Teleri had more need of boats than of sculpture. She had also feared that they would not desire a work crafted by the wife and mother of those who’d spilled the blood of their husbands and sons. But, though her vocation had long lain elsewhere, she too had trained at her father’s side and had learned from Aulë. While she had seldom had cause to labor in this fashion, particularly with a husband and seven talented sons, she was able to summon the skill to create the practical tools needed to rebuild a ship, a harbor, a city and, with them, some semblance of the lives of those remaining. She had toiled day after day, creating the vices needed to shape wood for use in the hull of a ship, rings to be affixed to canvas sails, the many nails needed to bind the vessel together and anchors for a fleet at rest.

She had wondered then if it were possible for her to offer more, to provide some sort of apology, some acknowledgment that great wrong was done. But, though she had known her husband to be fiery, though she had known even she could not restrain his spirit, though she had imagined his anguish upon learning of his father’s death and of the jewels’ theft, there had remained and remained still a part of her that believed she ought to have been able to intercede, that, if anyone might have prevented this, she could have if only she hadn’t left. That her mind had known it to be untrue had not prevented her heart from feeling it in the darkest hours.

Her own life had been as slow to rebuild as those of the Teleri. She had allowed that thought to surface once and then had refused to acknowledge it again. She still believed any acknowledgement of her own pain to be offensive for her children had not died innocently at another’s command, though she grew, as time passed, less sure of this. She did not know their fate. This she found to be the most difficult of all. Days had passed. Then months and then years. Yeni. Without a word. With no tidings of her husband’s fate and none of her sons’. 

In her angrier moments and her more sorrowful, she had thought of the Doom pronounced and she had wondered if the Valar knew they cursed those who remained as well as those who left. What cold being would condemn a mother to years in ignorance of her children’s fate? Who would ask a wife to spend years without knowing what had become of her husband’s fate? She had known she should not allow this blasphemy to surface even in her most private thoughts, but she was unable not to think it.

“Not even your lamentation shall reach our shores.” Would that it had. Would that it could. Then she would, at least, have known. She had believed her husband to be dead. His nature had been too fierce. His temper too unchecked. He had dared declare war against the mightiest of the Valar, against one the Valar would not fight. He would not have stopped unless he had regained what was lost or had died. But she had remained ignorant of how or when. 

She had taken to wandering near the place of the Weaver. She had heard Miriel has consented to return to life upon her husband’s death, that Finwë had taken her place in the halls of Mandos, and the Broideress had returned to inhabit the halls of the weaver and to ply her trade. That, too, had confirmed her fear that Fëanor no longer lived, for would not his mother’s strength have remained with him while he lived? But she had not been allowed to ask; the living were not allowed within the Weaver’s halls and no tidings of the Exiles passed through its walls. Miriel ßerindë may have woven the histories of her son and his children and his brothers and nephews and nieces into great tapestries, but none of those who knew and loved them had seen them and so had learned what befell them. Sometimes she had even envied the Teleri for they at least had known their children’s fate while hers remained unknown to her.

Her father had told her she must begin to create again or her despair would consume her. She had wanted to tell him that it would not, that she was no Miriel to pass from this world, but she had known enough to understand that one needed not to enter the halls of Mandos to cease existing. Many such ghosts had inhabited Valinor in the days and years following the Darkening. Some had remained so; others had found a way to return to life. She had understood her father’s fear and had felt it a little. So she had begun to create. She had sketched, slowly at first, images of a mother grieving; it had been her story, she had known But she had also known that it was the story of many Teleri whose sons had not returned from the harbor that day. Her sketches had become clay, molded slowly, painstakingly with her hands. As her vision of the work had slowly taken form, she had considered what materials she might use. Marble had been one she had loved and one she had known well. But she had thought back upon the events of the day and had decided in favor of bronze. She had traveled to Formenos and had located the stores of ancient weapons her husband had studied and had sought to remake. She had found swords and spears; she had located shields and armor. Her father, who had traveled with her, had watched her, and she had watched understanding dawn in his eyes. He had started to help her as she had dragged piece after piece from the store rooms and had helped her load the wagons that would carry these sometime weapons of war back to Tirion. Once returned to Tirion, he had stayed and had watched while she had refined her clay sculpture and had crafted the mold. Then he had helped her melt the instruments of war down into the material she had used to craft her piece and had worked with her as she had poured the molten substance into the mold. When the mold had been cast away, he had waited and watched while she had refined the sculpture, had polished it and then had applied the materials to create the patina. 

The Teleri had received this gift gracefully. Whatever feelings they had harbored about Nerdanel, her husband and her children, they had set those aside in favor of the symbolism of the piece. It had been granted a place of honor near the water, and she too had granted a portion of the grace she sought. They had permitted her access to the harbor and to the shore. One mariner and then another had shown her the places outside of Alqualondë where she might also sit watch for a ship sailing from Middle Earth. She had been grateful, and, at first, she had often returned there. But the years had passed and no ship had been sighted and no exile had returned. Though she had not given up hope that she at least might one day learn her children’s fate, if she might not be allowed to welcome them home, she had determined she must return less often, if only for the sake of her own heart and mind. She had selected a date, one with meaning to her and to the people her husband harmed, and on it, she traveled to the sea, walking and waiting by its shores, quietly and patiently in hope.


End file.
